Two College of Education faculty and three doctoral students were part of research teams that received top honors at the fifth annual Forward Thinking Poster Session and Colloquy. Both groups were singled out for the high quality of their proposed research, as well as the outstanding participation of the graduate students themselves. The event, sponsored by the Marquette University Graduate School, occurred on December 1, 2009.

Honorees included Dr. Lisa Edwards, Assistant Professor, Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology, and doctoral students Brittany N. Barber and Keyona Jarrett for their session entitled, The Influence of Cultural Variables on Latino/a Adolescent Sexual Activity. The overarching goal of this project is to better understand cultural influences on sexual activity among Latino/a adolescents. Latino/a youth are influenced by cultural values (i.e., familism) that may promote the delay of sexual activity, as well as certain cultural variables (i.e., assimilation) that might put these youth at risk for early sexual behavior. This study will serve as a foundation for future research and prevention efforts aimed at addressing this critical health issue.

Dr. Leigh van den Kieboom also partnered with Edwin O'Sullivan, EDPL doctoral student and Mathematics faculty Dr. Marta Magiera, Dr. John Moyer, and mathematics graduate student, Ashley Zenisek to present their session: Pre-service elementary teachers’ knowledge of relational thinking. Their session took a look at how relational thinking changes the focus of problem solving from computing answers (arithmetic) to identifying and operating on relations between quantities (algebra), rather than on the quantities themselves. Little attention has been paid to teachers’ knowledge (broadly interpreted) of relational thinking. This study recognizes that pre-service teachers own relational thinking ability may be inadequate to meet the challenges of facilitating the development of relational thinking in their future students. The results of the study will be used to conduct a large-scale study that documents ways of improving K-12 teachers’ knowledge of early algebra concepts.